Cards Against Humanity

History

Cards Against Humanity was created by a group of Highland Park High School alumni as a party game for a New Year's Eve celebration.^[2] Cards Against Humanity was financed through the website Kickstarter, exceeding its funding goal by nearly 300% by the project's end on January 30, 2011.^[3] Co-creator Ben Hantoot stated in an interview with Dice Hate Me that the game was developed by "8 of us who are the core writer-creators, 5 or 6 additional 'part time' developers" and "dozens of friends and acquaintances who have played the game".^[4]
In October 2011, the game was exhibited as part of the "Big Games" area of the annual IndieCade games festival in Culver City, where the release of a first expansion was officially announced.^[5] The first expansion, which contained 112 new cards, was released in November 2011 and sold out in three days. ^[6] On March 15, 2012, they re-released an updated base set as well as the first expansion and sold out almost immediately, becoming the top 2 products in Amazon.com's Toys & Games category in the process.^[7] The second expansion set was released in August 2012 at PAX Prime and included 25 new black cards, 75 new white cards, and 12 blank cards.
Cards Against Humanity released a special holiday expansion pack in December 2012, allowing users to choose their price. The endeavor earned $70,066.27 in profit, which the makers donated to the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia.^[8]

Gameplay

The Cards Against Humanity website describes the rules of the game:

To start the game, each player draws ten white "answer" cards. One randomly chosen player begins as the Card Czar, and plays a black "question" card. The Card Czar reads the question out to the group. Each player answers the question by passing one white "answer" card, face down, to the Card Czar. The Card Czar shuffles all of the answers, reads them out loud in a humorous fashion, and picks their favorite. Whoever played that answer gets to keep the Black Card as one Awesome Point. After each round, a new player becomes the Card Czar, and every player draws back up to ten cards.^[9]

The game includes rules for so-called "Pick 2s" and "Pick 3s," black question cards that are answered with multiple white answer cards. The official rules include additional provisions for gambling previously won "Awesome Points" for the right to play additional white cards during a round. There are also many house rules.^[9]